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Originally Posted by GenuineRisk
The article actually presents a case that grass-fed may be at least as ecologically sound as feedlot:
"The guru of the movement is a Zimbabwean scientist named Allan Savory, who says that managed grazing can draw huge amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere—a controversial claim. But the ranchers I met all swore that managed grazing had transformed their pastures. The beef they’re producing is less economically efficient than feedlot beef, but in some ways it’s better ecologically. They aren’t using pharmaceuticals in feed. They aren’t extracting nutrients in the form of corn from heavily fertilized soil in Iowa, shipping them up to a thousand miles on 110-car trains, and piling them up as manure in Texas. Instead their cattle are building and maintaining a landscape."
Absolutely grass-fed is less economically efficient and also absolutely the best choice, from an environmental perspective, is to eat less meat in general, but there's an ecological argument to be made for grass-fed, also.
That was a fascinating article; thank you so much for linking to it!
And it's been no secret about how chickens are kept in factory farms. Whenever someone starts to talk to me about cruelty in horse racing, if they're very obnoxious, I inquire if they are vegetarian, because, even at its worst, the treatment of equine sport athletes doesn't come close to the cruelties inflicted on food animals. Pigs are also treated atrociously.
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I prefer grass fed beef myself, but the argument regarding environment does not entirely sway in its favor:
Here’s the inconvenient truth: Feedlots, with their troubling use of pharmaceuticals, save land and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Latin American beef, according to the FAO, produces more than twice as many emissions per pound as its North American counterpart—because more of the cattle are on pasture, and because ranchers have been cutting down so much rain forest to make pastures and cropland for feed. Faced with the staggering problem of meeting rising global demand for meat, “feedlots are better than grass fed, no question,” says Jason Clay, a food expert at WWF. “We have got to intensify. We’ve got to produce more with less.”
Nat Geo has been doing a series of articles like this for the past few months. Definitely worth reading. They also discuss farmed fish in one of the articles.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GenuineRisk
Just check in to whether the fish is a sustainable species.  Tilapia is usually a pretty good choice; matures quickly and can be farmed with relatively little environmental damage. |
I wouldn't touch tilapia...